Everyday Watercolor Flowers

After about a year of learning, I'm an advanced beginner at watercolor thanks to Let's Make Art.

As a supplement, I thought it would be nice to find books that contain simple exercises to use as warmups to more involved projects or subjects for watercolor cards I've been sending to friends and family.

I checked this book out from the library based on how pretty the flowers were. The first week I had the book, I read most of the introduction, which was well laid out and good for beginners and more advanced painters. Like many watercolor books, this book included intros to color theory, suggested materials, basic techniques, etc. The book seemed aimed at beginners to slightly more advanced watercolorists, so I thought I was in for a treat.

When I got to the “step-by-step” sections that group , I was extremely disappointed. What drew me in to begin with was the large, beautiful flowers. Those continued being really pretty.

However, Ms. Rainey neglected to include a list of the colors used in each tutorial. If you read through the three-four step project, the author only mentions about 2 of the 4-6 colors being used. She doesn't explain, for example, whether she's using warm and/or cool reds in a project and just instructs the reader to throw in some reds. Depending on the paints the user has, there can be a dizzying array of each primary and secondary color. The projects rarely talk much about approaching color mixing to achieve the end result, either. On the Hellebore project, there is no explanation of arriving at the soft peach on the example.

The instructions gloss over or ignore steps that I see happened in the progressive pictures include a lot of information that I could based on each picture. Given the level this book seems to be aimed at, there should be more explicit instructions.

Jenna Rainey is a relatively well-known YouTube watercolorist. After checking out this book and being disappointed, I thought I'd see if any of her videos corresponded to the book's projects. Her recorded tutorials do fill in some of the holes in the book, but there's no series related to the book, which I think would have been smart.

So, if you want to see some pretty pictures, check out this book, but don't expect to learn how to paint them. If you are looking for a more useful guide on painting flowers, see “Watercolor Botanicals” by Eunice Sun.